At ITEX, the Bellevue, Wash., membership trading company that has 24,000 members and 90 offices around the country, that percentage is 6%. According to Alan Zimmelman, a spokesman for ITEX, barter exchanges work best in local economies and is done predominately via the phone or electronic messaging, rather than over the Internet. Members will use the Internet to search for ways to spend their barter dollars but will call or email one of ITEX’s brokers when they want to engage in a trade. “The Internet will grow but it is a slow process,” said Zimmelman, noting it’s easier to pick up the phone, send a text or email. ITEX members do use the Internet to post advertisements or electronic newsletters.

Members of bartering exchange NuBarter do use the Internet to make deals, even though the company has customer service reps at the ready to help members. On NuBarter.com members are given a line of credit and search for what they want to use that line of credit for. Once they find something they click buy and the seller is contacted via an email. If it is approved the seller and buyer will make arrangements.

NuBarter, which is based in Savannah, Ga., but has offices around the country and a network of barter exchange partners around the world, put together a network of roughly 2,300 members who trade among themselves. A line of credit is given to the members and NuBarter’s job is to make sure the goods and services stay balanced. For instance, NuBarter won’t let 10 hair salons on the network if there is only demand for two. What’s more, in order for a small business to be allowed into the network, it has to go through an interview process. The line of credit is based on criteria, including years of service, number of employees and size of the business, said Gary Field, president of NuBarter.

Full story at http://www.foxsmallbusinesscenter.com/strategy/2010/09/10/bartering-saves-bucks-businesses/

You can enter in three ways. You can retweet the following message on TWITTER: “Win a free iPod on #Barterquest http://tinyurl.com/2dqolms” You can become a fan of BarterQuest on FACEBOOK and post on our wall what you like about BarterQuest or bartering in general. Or you can register on BarterQuest and invite your friends simply by using this link: https://http://www.barterquest.com/summary/invite_other_networks. By tweeting on TWITTER and posting on FACEBOOK and inviting your friends, you will increase your chances to win. Also, the more often you tweet or post on FACEBOOK, the more chance you will have of winning. You do not have to be a user of BarterQuest to enter. Contest rules can be found on http://www.barterquest.com/home/article/free-apple-ipod.

“This giveaway is intended to thank our current users and encourage others to come to BarterQuest to trade for the things they want,” stated Michael Satz, CEO of BarterQuest. “The BarterQuest community is growing rapidly, by 32% from year end 2009. Page views have increased by 61%. The large and established market for barter is finding its way to the Internet, and in particular to our site, which alone provides a full solution to the problems of finding, negotiating and completing your trades. We hope this promotion will lead more people to use BarterQuest to save money, be green, and have fun.”

BarterQuest (www.barterquest.com), a platform that supports the cashless exchange of goods, services and real estate, today announced that it has formed an Advisory Committee to provide expertise and guidance to senior management. The areas in which the Committee will compliment senior management include B2B e-barter, marketing, and business development. The members of the Committee are the following:

Ray Bastarache is a pioneer in B2B e-barter. He founded Barter Network in 1985, which was a clearinghouse for businesses that traded the goods and services which they produced for the goods and services they needed. The company was one of the largest and most successful trading networks in the United States. After its sale, he remained active in the e-barter industry in various capacities. Mr. Bastarache has served as Treasurer, Vice President, and President of the International Reciprocal Trade Association (IRTA). He received two Distinguished Service Awards from the Association and its first Mentorship Award. In 2009, the barter industry awarded him the “Legends of Barter” Award.

Harjiv Singh is the co-founder and Co-CEO of Gutenberg Communications, a global strategic communications firm. A serial entrepreneur, he has more than 15 years experience in the communications, technology and financial services industries. Mr. Singh frequently speaks and writes on a range of public relations issues, including the impact of globalization. In 2007, he was recognized as one of the leading PR professionals in the Asia Pacific region.

Dr. Sheldon Weinig founded Materials Research Corporation, a multinational semiconductor company listed on the American Stock Exchange that was thereafter acquired by Sony. In 1996, he retired as Vice Chairman of Engineering and Manufacturing of Sony America. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and SUNY at Stony Brook. Dr. Weinig was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 1984 and in 1988 was awarded the rank of Chevalier dans l’Ordre National de la Legion d’Honneur by the French government.

“We are excited about the value that the Advisory Committee can bring to the future development of BarterQuest,” stated Paul Bocheck, President. “We are gratified that people of the caliber of Ray, Harjiv, and Shelly have been willing to lend their experience and insight to our company. Not only should this make BarterQuest a more successful business, but it should help us better serve our users.”

NEW YORK, January 16, 2010 – BarterQuest (http://www.barterquest.com)

Trends

Localization: Every week we are seeing local communities join the internet barter site foray. Sites like ThingHeap.com serve geographically limited areas. Community currency is a new buzz word and financial institutions are backing this kind of currency swap.

Specialization: Switchgames.com services gamers and gamers only, while swaptree.com only does barter with music, books, and video.

Exaggeration: Merchants Barter claims to be the top rated exchange because they got 8 votes on their own survey. MyTradeAmerica asserts they are the biggest, best, and boldest on Twitter, despite being a very new exchange.

Consolidation: IMS buys strong exchanges and incorporates them in to the IMS system. ITEX partners with SuperMedia to create SuperTradeExchange. Barter 21 has an open platform for independents to trade together, as does doBarter, IRTA, NATE and Virtual Barter.

Predictions

This is the hard part. It’s easy to say that the past has been significant and spot trends by looking backward, but looking in to the future requires a crystal ball that I just don’t have. That being said, I am going to make some bold and some not-so-bold predictions for the industry:

1. Barter Will Continue to Become Mainstream – More and more news outlets will cover barter as a business strategy, more gurus will be talking about barter, and barter will continue the conquest of pop culture, american style. Not a bold prediction, but one worth mentioning.
2. More Item Specific Sites Pop Up - Outside the circles of BarterQuest and U-Exchange, local and product centric sites like thingheap.com and switchgames.com become the norm, with other sites appearing for swapping vehicles, home cooked meals, computer equipment, furniture, electronics, and yard work taking center stage. Why? Because it’s easier to faciliate like-for-like barter transactions in a direct trade situation. Think swaptree.com. They do a great job with this.
3. SuperMedia buys ITEX – Pending a successful first year result, SuperMedia announces plans to purchase ITEX in a stock and trade buy-out one year after emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
4. Someone Gets the Independents Together - In order to compete with ITEX and then SuperTradeExchange, most of the independent barter exchanges band together in some kind of group, create a central brand, and do business as a whole new entity.
5. Pirates Still Appear and Disappear – Just like any other year, 2010 has its share of new pirates in the industry (individuals that would rather rape a trade exchange than own a trade exchange). Notably, Tradia, one of the longest running pirate barter organizations, disappears amid lawsuits and franchisee revolts.

That’s it for my list. We’ll check in next year and see how I did. Hopefully I’ll get a couple right and I can claim to be omnicient.

• The opportunity to trade services

• The opportunity to trade real estate

• Clubs to create your own trading community of friends and family or people with similar interests

• Forums to share your thoughts

• Verification to increase your confidence in your trading partners

• Points, our exchange currency, to equalize trading values and acquire items

• Secure payment, a form of escrow that, if you send points in a trade, allows you to confirm that you got what you bargained for before your points become available to your trading partner

• A payment system jointly developed with PayPal to secure any money transfers

Check out their improvements at http://www.barterquest.com

Two and a half weeks later, my computer is still in the box in my office and the furniture is still collecting a bit of dust in storage. Why? What do these barter sites lack? I’ve been in and around the barter industry since 2000. I’ve completed millions of dollars in barter transactions, for myself and for clients of my barter exchange. I’ve worked directly with hundreds of businesses, helping them trade anything from a couple of gift certificates to deeded land. In my mind, I have plenty of expertise to get a simple direct trade transaction completed.

The internet is supposed to help facilitate those transactions. These websites are meant to be a place where other like minded people go to make their trades. My items, though not iPods or iPhones, are high quality and highly desirable items.

So, what went wrong?

The only answer I have come up with in the last couple of days is that direct trade is hard. It’s hard. Finding someone who has something you want, who wants exactly what you have, is a difficult proposition, internet or no internet. Even when BarterQuest sent me a couple of suggestions, it didn’t help much in finding someone who wanted what I have.

Years ago Big Vine was the web site that attempted to facilitate trades online, but on a barter currency. No direct trading, just barter currency trades. With millions of dollars in funding, it lasted a year or two and then was sold, over and over, until now what is left of those clients resides at ITEX.

My experience with these internet barter websites is not much different. What’s missing? What would make a difference?

Brokers. Trade directors. Customer service representatives. Whatever you want to call them, people on the ground making things happen. Though all of these sites are a valiant attempt at helping people barter what they have for what they want, they do not replace the interaction that must take place for people to make trades happen. People can intuitively and casually extract information from potential clients that will help them to make a connection. Computers just ask for information and to fill fields. And the more fields people have to fill out, the less likely they are to actually complete the form. It doesn’t matter why, the experiment was a failure. I traded nothing. In the end, all of the sites I posted my stuff to did not give me what I wanted: a completed barter transaction.

As more startups appear, I will continue with this exploration. Maybe one day a system will be developed to replace what I think brokers do well. Until then, my suggestion is that you are better off working with a traditional barter exchange.

This is an update to part 2. In part 2 I posted items available for trade on four different websites. One week later, I have this to report:

Craigslist generated no responses aside from the ususal spam and people trying to tell me they want to pay me twice what I am asking, if I’ll just send them my bank account information.

Swaptree generated no responses.

U-Exchange generated one response, an old laptop that I just don’t want.

BarterQuest generated two responses, one for a polaroid camera and the other for an HP Pavillion.

Pay me with a Chicken? Nada.

One week in and none of the services are doing a good job of helping me trade my stuff. More to follow.